About the Department

The Department of Mathematics at UC Santa Cruz is a small department consisting of 15 full-time faculty and seven lecturers. Given its size, it sustains a remarkable level of research activity, with virtually its entire faculty actively engaged in mathematics research. Several research areas, such as random matrix theory, symplectic topology, representation theory and number theory are at the cutting edge of contemporary work. Department faculty regularly present their research at international meetings and top institutions.

The department was an early sponsoring institution of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, and department faculty maintain close ties with mathematicians in the Bay Area and beyond, including involvement in a joint seminar series with Davis, Berkeley, and Stanford in symplectic geometry, a joint arithmetic geometry number theory seminar with Berkeley and Stanford and a tri-annual seminar series on Lie Groups and Algebras.

Research achievements of the faculty are reflected in a multitude of awards and grants, including multiple Sloan Fellowship and NSF CAREER grants. Many faculty members maintain ties to industry, K-12 education and to other scientific departments to complement their academic research. The faculty have a strong record of excellence in research publlications, collaboration and teaching.

The Department offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Ph.D. graduates often obtain postdoctoral positions at research institutions and continue on in academia. Undergraduate majors often enter the K-12 teaching workforce as well as begin graduate studies at top Ph.D. programs in the U.S.